Everything we thought we knew about the Tour of Flanders has changed over the last week. After E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem, everybody had an idea of how the Ronde might play out. It was clear that Mathieu van der Poel was going to be the favourite, but we expected Wout van Aert would be in the mix too, and we could see that Lidl-Trek had the strength in numbers to make the race very interesting.
After that crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders suddenly looks very different. Wout is out, and that was the headline news, but Lidl-Trek were also badly affected. Jasper Stuyven, who looked so good at Harelbeke, is out of the Ronde, and so is Alex Kirsch, while Mads Pedersen also fell.
We don’t know how Mads will be affected physically by his fall, but losing Stuyven changes his race tactically. After Gent-Wevelgem, where Stuyven and Jonathan Milan were up there with Pedersen in the break of seven riders, I put the Lidl-Trek collective up there alongside Van der Poel as a favourite for the Tour of Flanders.
They would have entered this race confident that they could use their numbers to put Van der Poel under pressure, but it’s a little bit different now that they’ve lost some major people. Lidl-Trek might still find a way to win on Sunday, of course, but this isn’t their full line-up and that will surely change how they race.
It’s a similar situation for Visma-Lease A Bike. Losing Van Aert completely changes their approach to the race, and they had already lost some key guys from their Classics team to illness and injury. Christophe Laporte and Jan Tratnik will also miss the Tour of Flanders, and Dylan van Baarle has been ill, so that really leaves Matteo Jorgenson and Tiesj Benoot as their best options.
That certainly wasn’t the plan Visma had at the start of the year for the Tour of Flanders, but they improvised really well at Dwars door Vlaanderen after Wout’s crash. Jorgenson and Benoot attacked just afterwards, and it was really quite an amazing way to respond to the setback. Jorgenson will definitely have gained a lot of confidence from his win, but at the same time he will know that Flanders is Flanders. It’s something entirely different to Waregem or Omloop or Harelbeke.
And it’s worth noting that Alpecin-Deceuninck also had a late change to their line-up. They left Jasper Philipsen out of the team for Flanders, which was a surprise for me, because he had the potential to be almost a co-leader, or at least a second option. Instead, they are completely focused on Van der Poel.
Chaos
In any case, it’s going to be an interesting dynamic on Sunday. All winter, the thinking was that the Tour of Flanders would be a duel between Van der Poel and Van Aert. Now, we’re looking at something different. For one thing, Alpecin-Deceuninck will have even more responsibility to control the race after what happened to Van Aert and Lidl-Trek.
In that sense, the Tour of Flanders has completely changed. There is the potential for some big chaos, in my opinion, especially if there’s a big break early on. We see it happen more and more these days, these big breaks that go really deep into the race, and it will be interesting to see who takes control of the chase behind.
We could end up with an anticipation race, where riders who are strong but not necessarily top favourites for Flanders – people like Oier Lazkano, Stefan Küng, Alberto Bettiol or maybe even Matteo Trentin – might try to go earlier than normal to get ahead of Van der Poel. Now, Mathieu is just so good that he could decide to follow them himself. He’s certainly shown in the last two races that he isn’t afraid to go early, but it’s still a big tactical call to make. Mentally this will be a big, big game to play.
Mathieu’s situation before this Ronde is similar to mine in 2011 when I was with Leopard. I was the favourite, and the weight of the race was on my team. As the day went on, I gradually lost my teammates, so I said to myself that the best defence was just to attack. I went quite early then with Sylvain Chavanel, and when they caught us at the Muur, we went again on the run-in, but this time with Nick Nuyens. The rest is history. Nuyens won the race, and maybe something like this could also happen on Sunday.
The other teams will be thinking about how to take on Van der Poel. They’ll be weighing up whether to go on the first time up the Kwaremont or the second time, and so on. But at the same time, they all know that Mathieu himself has the potential to go early. That might be how he defends himself. He could maybe even go from the Koppenberg. It’s going to be an intriguing race.
Like Van der Poel, Fabian Cancellara bore the weight of expectation in 2011, but that may been his tactical undoing on the day
Van Aert
I was very sorry to see Wout van Aert crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen and I can empathise a lot with his situation. I know what it feels like to crash and miss out on a big objective. I even experienced it twice in the same year back in 2012, first at the Tour of Flanders and then at the Olympics.
Honestly, I really struggled with that. It weighed heavily on me for a long time, especially because it was my mistake. At Flanders, a bottle rolled towards me in the feed zone, and I thought I’d make a bunny hop over it. Instead, I crashed and broke my collarbone. It feels easier when you get taken out by a crash in the bunch, but when the crash is your own fault, it’s harder to accept.
But it can also be a chance to take stock and think things over. Maybe even a chance to learn some things about yourself. I think that was also the case for Van der Poel when he had his crash in the mountain bike at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. When you look back, it was a big moment in his career.
For Wout, maybe this is the moment to turn the page in a new direction and see things differently. He’d already fallen at Harelbeke, and now this. Something like this will of course affect him. It would affect anybody. He invested all that time going to train in Teide, he made this different approach, and it all came to nothing because of a stupid crash.
Wout will feel pressure to come back strong and win something big this season, but the main thing is to remember that he is human. Right now, he needs to keep his feet on the ground and give respect to his recovery time. He shouldn’t rush back just because the Giro d’Italia is coming up. It’s a tough situation right now, but he can use this moment and this time in a positive way.
Tudor’s Ronde debut
This is a special Tour of Flanders for me, because it’s Tudor Pro Cycling Team’s first appearance in the race. We’ve had a very positive Classics campaign so far, the boys have learned a lot from these races, and now we are finishing it off with the biggest one of all.
At the team, it’s not my role to talk tactics, that’s for our sports directors Bart Leysen and Marcel Sieberg. I will just wish the boys the best of luck and tell them to enjoy the beauty of the race, because it’s something really special. It’s going to be totally different to all the other races they have done so far.
The race itself is something like 280km when you add in the neutralised section, but the Tour of Flanders isn’t just longer than the other Belgian races, it’s much bigger. The crowds are huge, and the atmosphere is incredible. They will never have experienced anything like it.
Like every other team, we’ve also had crashes, sickness, fatigue and so on over the last few weeks. We’ve been dealing with the same reality as everyone else, but we’ve kept the motivation high, and we’ve always kept the human element at the centre of everything we do. We’ll keep that spirit for the Tour of Flanders. The race is about learning and learning, just like they’ve been doing all Spring.
And we have the experience of Matteo Trentin, who is riding very well this Spring. He lifts the whole structure for these races, with the way he rides and with the way he leads. On Sunday, the boys will just keep doing their jobs like they have done up to now. If they can manage that, then I think we have a chance to do a really great result with the team.
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